Bukkake. Holly felt cold. Even here, in this tranquil Japanese garden, the world was poisoned. She hesitated for a moment, and then she stood up and walked around the edge of the pond until she came to the Zig Zag Bridge. The two men stopped talking, obviously waiting for her to pass. But she came right up to them, and smiled, and held up her cell phone.
"Pardon me, but I was wondering if either of you two gentlemen could help me. You see, my battery's dead and I have to call my daughter to tell her where to meet me."
"Ah," said the man with the white fedora. He reached into his blazer pocket and produced a tiny Sony cell phone with a shiny chrome cover. "Here, please, be my guest."
"That's so kind of you. I didn't knowwhatI was going to do."
"Please, no problem."
Holly went across to the other side of the bridge and punched out Mickey's number. When he answered, she quickly texted him:
"NOTE THIS NO. HOLLY."
"??" he texted back.
"XPLN L8R."
Then she said loudly, "Okay, honey, I'll meet you at Janine's in fifteen minutes. That's great."
She handed the phone back. "Thanks again. Some people think I'm overprotective when it comes to my daughter but you know, you can't be too careful, can you, not these days?"
"Absolutely right," agreed the older man.
"Is that your little girl down there?"
"My niece."
"Well, you must be very proud of her."
The two men exchanged a quick, enigmatic look. "I am," said the older man. "Very proud uncle indeed."
Text Message
In the parking lot she texted Mickey again and explained what she had lip-read. She watched as the girl and her uncle and the man in the white fedora came out of the Japanese Garden and stood talking for a while. Then the uncle and the man in the white fedora shook hands and bowed to each other before they went off in opposite directions. The girl took hold of her uncle's hand and swung it as she walked.
Mickey replied that the cell phone had already been traced to Butterfly Motion Pictures with an address on Boren Avenue in Seattle, Washington. "Ill put Det Nelson on it pronto." Holly wouldn't have known whatbukkakewas unless she hadn't been involved in another Japanese sex-abuse case last November, when more than 60bukkakevideos had been confiscated from a video rental store downtown. It was the latest rage in Japanese pornography, in which dozens of men climaxed over the upturned face of a single young girl until she looked as if she had been frosted, like a cake. Sometimes it was done with her eyes held wide open. Other times she was given pints of semen to drink, out of a flask, to see if she could manage to keep it all down. That was what the proud uncle on the Zig Zag Bridge had been offering for $2,000.
No Daisy
Holly drove home. The afternoon was growing overcast now. When she let herself in, Marcella was in the kitchen, rolling meatballs on a floured board.
"Hi, Marcella." She looked at the coatrack. "Daisy not back yet?"
Marcella shook her head. "Maybe she go to see her friend."
"She didn't say anything about it this morning. You couldn't give her a call for me, could you?"
"Sure thing." Marcella smacked the flour off her hands and picked up the phone from the kitchen wall. She dialed and waited, but after a while she shook her head. "Her phone is switch off."
"That's odd. She told me she'd be home by five for sure."
"Don't you worry, Ms. Summers. She forget what time it is, that's all."
Holly went to the window. "I don't want her out too late . It looks like there's a hell of a storm coming over."
When the kitchen clock crept to six-thirty and Daisy still hadn't come back, Holly had Marcella call Daisy's best friend, Tracey Hunter. The sky was the color of slate, and raindrops began to measle the window-panes. Tracey's mother said that Daisy had left their apartment shortly after four and that as far as she knew she was coming directly home.
"I'm worried now," said Holly as Marcella hung up the phone. The Hunters lived only three blocks away, over the Columbia Valley Travel Office. "Try calling the Williamsons."
Marcella phoned all of the friends that Daisy might have gone to visit, but none of them had seen her. She also called Tyrone, in case she had stopped by the gallery, but he hadn't seen her, either. "But call me as soon as you find her," he said.
Holly put on her raincoat and said, "Listen I'm going to go look for her. If she comes home just give me a buzz, okay?"
"Sure thing, Ms. Summers," said Marcella. "Don't forget your hat. It's a rain like drown rat."
When she stepped out into the street, the rain was cascading from the yellow-and-white-striped restaurant awning and flooding the gutters. People with umbrellas and newspapers over their heads were running for shelter. She turned up her collar, thrust her hands into her pockets, and stepped out quickly in the direction of the Hunters' home.
Halfway along Thirteenth Street she saw a small figure running toward her holding a pink cotton jacket over her head, and with relief she called out,"Daisy!"But the figure wasn't Daisy at all; it was a little Chinese girl, and she ran past her without even looking at Holly.
With the rain clinging to her eyelashes and dripping from the tip of her nose, she walked all the way to the Columbia Valley Travel Office. There were color photographs in the window of all the different river trips that tourists could take up the Columbia and the Willamette, to Multnomah Falls and Mount Hood and the International Rose Test Garden, a mass of yellow roses. She looked around for a few moments, but there was no sign of Daisy anywhere, and she began to walk back.
She called into several stores and restaurants, asking if anybody had seen a little girl of eight in a pink jacket and jeans, but all she got in reply was the solemn shaking of heads. In the doorway of the Portland Family Bakery she sent a text message to Mickey, telling him what had happened.
His reply came back almost at once: "Don't worry Ill get on it go home."
Mickey Brings Bad News
She sat at the dining table, still wearing her wet raincoat, while Marcella stayed with her.
"I can't believe that she would have gone anywhere without telling me."
"Ms. Summers, Daisy is a good girl always, you know that. But even good girls sometimes play a little mischief."
"She's been upset lately, you know, about not having a father. I think she's getting to the age when she really needs a man in her life."
"Hmmh! That depends ifyouneed a man in your life. You've been very good to Daisy, Ms. Summers, raised her good."
Holly tried to smile. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Marcella. I wish you'd call me Holly."
Marcella shook her head. "How many times you ask me this, hah? And each time what do I say? I work for you, I give you respect. In this times now, nobody give nobody no respect. Not husbands for wives, not parents for children. Every place you look is no respect."
A few minutes after eight-thirty, with still no sign of Daisy, the red light over the doorbell flashed, and Marcella went to answer it. It was Mickey, looking as if he had swum from the other side of the Willamette River.